“The Voice of One of Our Best Cultural Workers”

“The Voice of One of Our Best Cultural Workers”
By Michail Yuhasz

Who is our dear old man, Father Emil Kubek — this is something that every Rusyn man and woman knows in our American Rus’. He is our lamp, he is our most prolific cultural worker; he is our […] unselfish Rusyn man who in the course of a long life has labored, written, and worked in the interests of the national awakening of American Rusyns. His pen is golden and from it have appeared wonderful epics, poems, stories, even monumental works, novels in our dear Rusyn language and for us —exclusively for us Subcarpathians Rusyns. If he wasn’t born a Rusyn, if he would have been the son of a different people, then he would have had a great worldly glory, his name would have been written in golden letters in the book of hymns, our dear poet-writer would have had worldly riches. But God gave him to us, the poor Subcarpathian, Rusyn people, who although we value him higher than anything else, although with sweet and bitter tears we read the work of this creative genius of ours, nevertheless we’re not in the position to honor or compensate him materially for the work Father Kubek has done for us.

The heart of Father Kubek is always with the people. He is our old lute player who sings to us wonderful melodies, who adorns us with flowery words from the richness of his brilliance and if we’re bitter, then he cries with us over the memories of long past glory, and if we have to go to battle to defend ourselves, for the long lost Rusyn freedom, then the trumpet of this never fearful, never cowardly poet thunders with a battle cry to us…

So today, when our American Rus’ has set forth on the final battle for autonomy and for the national liberty of our dear Subcarpathian Rus’ from the Poprad to the Tysa, he has not remained silent and from his faraway sanctuary has sent the following letter.